


Quiet Like Still Water

by Blue_Jay



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dimension Travel, Episode: s09e04 Slumber Party, F/F, Falling In Love, Love at First Sight, Short & Sweet, Time Travel (Mentioned)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-12
Updated: 2013-11-12
Packaged: 2017-12-31 22:48:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1037294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Jay/pseuds/Blue_Jay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She and Dorothy share a moment in Oz. They don't quite declare their love, but Charlie thinks they might be getting there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quiet Like Still Water

**Author's Note:**

> With the exception of wincest, I've never shipped a ship faster in any fandom ever.
> 
> Also when I say short, I mean short.

This is Charlie Bradbury, and she finds her magic quest knee deep in a river she's never heard of. 

"You couldn't have possibly believed my father wrote in everything," Dorothy says with her usual air of exasperation and annoyance she gets when talking about her dad that's freaky similar to how Sam and Dean get about Carver Edlund. "A whole world can't fit inside a book after all."

Earlier Dorothy gave her clothes that more fit Oz fashion and Charlie rolls up the pants to mid-thigh before accepting the other woman's outstretched hands. They're rough with calluses you don't form from typing away at laptop or scrolling down touch screens. "Tolkien did," she answers, allowing herself to be led into the warm water of this unnamed river off a side trail that shoots from the yellow brick road, "but I guess you don't know about that."

Dorothy smiles, small and sarcastic. "You're showing me this new world of yours where you  _have_ to read, Miss Bradbury," she says, and drops her hands now that they're in the middle. "In a few minutes you'll feel better."

Charlie agrees and doesn't mention that there's a movie out, too, and not just a book, and the stupid flying monkey scene left her with nightmares for over a month. She's found that the movie was a pretty accurate portrayal without meaning to be, though; sometimes Oz is amazing and beautiful and other times it's horrifying. "What you need first in this modern assimilation is food," she tells her because that's one of the first things Dorothy showed her once they arrived, stopping in a town also never mentioned. "Seriously. The world's become more globalized, so we've got food pouring in from all over in a bigger way than it used to."

"Even in Kansas?" She sounds skeptical, and has good reason.

"Okay, so maybe not Kansas." Charlie sheds off her jacket, crumples it into a ball, and throws it to the shore. Dorothy has a prequel musical too where the Wicked Witch is shown as a good guy and she went to go see it five times. Now she just feels cheated. "New York City, though? Definitely."

Before they got in, Dorothy stripped down to almost nothing because her clothes were so heavy and Charlie isn't exactly, well,  _shy_ , but this is a woman who disappeared in the 1930s, whose orientation is a mystery, and seemed to get kind of flirty with Sam back before they left. But then she'll throw out something despicably close to an innuendo or get real close and for the first time in a while Charlie's just confused. Despite her bookish, geeky nature, she's more of a one-night-stand-with-fairies kind of gal who isn't much of a romantic and certainly doesn't believe in the all powerful Love at First Sight. 

Love at fifth sight though? Maybe that's a little more doable.

"Why did your dad call you Gale in the books if your last name's Baum?" she asks after they make something close to dinner dates and she doesn't know if they're friends or inching towards something else. She'd be up for something else -  _wants_ that something else real bad for the first time in years - but she's chill if they stay all platonic and stuff. She's in Oz, which is a magic fairy land that lives in a book, but Sam and Dean live in a book too and she's quickly learning fictional worlds are just as heart wrenching and flawed as everyday life. Because they are everyday life.

Needless to say, she feels a little disillusioned. 

Dorothy trails her fingers through the water. "Gale was my mother's maiden name," she answers. "For the sake of those not hunters, he couldn't use my real name, so he used hers. Everyone thought it was this great novel about money debates and political agendas in America when it was just some revisionist history written for the closure he  _thought_ I needed. He reduced me to a  _character_."

Back home, Sam and Dean are reduced to characters too where people write badly written fanfiction and have fan theories on tumblr. Dorothy's story and scholarly interpretation is basically pre-tumblr. "I might have ended up in a book," she says, "as a minor character. But then the author mysteriously disappeared and the books obviously stopped."

"What books? Pretty boys' back there?" When she nods, that small smile comes back but wider and Dorothy adds, "Hm. Shame. Bet you would've been everyone's favorite."

Yeah, right - Geeky girl who only discovered the books because she got ambushed by a guy named Chuck in a Barnes and Noble in Ohio. Back before Dorothy, Oz, hunting, Sam and Dean, what did she really have? A police record from age twelve she wouldn't stop running from and a mother in a coma she was too afraid to let go.

Mom read her  _The Wizard of Oz_ , too. 

With a shrug, she says, "I don't care. Most people's favorite character is Dean, anyway."

"And Sam?"

"If you don't know him, it's kind of a long story."

Actually, she  _does_ know him and the whole sucking demon blood thing still kind of freaks her out, even though it's been years. Dorothy says, "Here a lot of people know my name. Head of the Rebellion after Glinda and everything, after all, but it's different. In the time I was alive, women had no respect and hunters had little respect to begin with. In Oz, no one cares what you are. I'm human, I'm a woman, I walked the length of the Yellow Brick Road." She gives Charlie a sidelong glance and says the road’s name with capital letters. "Last chance, Red. You ready to come home?"

It's like every part of her shouts  _YES!_ at once. "No place like it," she answers. 

Dorothy grin, large and genuine, and a foreign fish brushes against Charlie's leg. They might not be in love, but maybe this counts as getting there.


End file.
